goFLUENT reveals the Importance of High Frequency Vocabulary to Language Learning

With the business world becoming increasingly ‘global’ and with English now well established as the international business language, learning English as a second language is becoming vital for those who want to further their careers.

Within this context, research by Dr Charles Browne, Professor of Applied Linguistics and the Director of the English as a Foreign language (EFL) Teacher Education Program at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo, Japan, points to EFL learners encountering serious problems in learning sufficient English vocabulary via traditional delivery methods. Thankfully, today’s technology provides a number of tools that can help to overcome this issue.

Dr Browne is an acknowledged specialist in computer assisted language learning (CALL) and second language vocabulary acquisition, as well as being goFLUENT’s Senior Academic Advisor. He has worked for the Japanese Ministry of Education and writes a monthly column for the top English education journal in Japan. In his webinar, he will outline his cutting edge research into the quickest and easiest ways to acquire business English proficiency.

“Estimates of the number of words in the English language vary from 1,000,000 to at least 350,000 – depending on your definition of what is a ‘word’,” said Professor Browne. “Of these, a typical native speaker of English knows some 20,000.

“While many learners will know the majority of the most common words in the English language, fewer learners will know words in less common usage,” he continued. “A key problem for those learning English as a foreign language is that they don’t know enough ‘high frequency’ words – that is, those words that occur most frequently in English.

“It’s thought that someone learning English needs to know at least 5,000 English words before they can begin to study the language independently. Yet, after around two thousand hours of ‘traditional’ language learning, top international students had managed to learn only some 4,000 English words” he revealed. Since learning English is now seen as a key factor in people’s – and their organizations’ - professional growth, Dr Browne is leading a webinar on ‘The Importance of High Frequency Vocabulary to Language Learning’. The webinar is being facilitated by goFLUENT, a leading provider of Business English training.

During the webinar - which takes place on Thursday 20th September from 11am to noon European Time (10am to 11am British Summer Time) and is free to attend - Dr Browne will reveal some basic findings regarding language learning, outline some of the problems faced by EFL learners related to vocabulary, and demonstrate important online tools that help teach important vocabulary and reading content.

These online tools can help dramatically improve business English vocabulary, along with improving English comprehension and communication skills.

These special online learning materials include authentic and motivating listening and reading content; graded materials and tools to help learners understand videos that are couched in language above their level of understanding. Webinar participants will learn on how tools like video captioning ‘keyword’ captioning; ‘automaticity’ (decreasing the cognitive load placed on learners by deleting less important and less well known vocabulary), bilingual captioning, clickable HTML directories and speed control, can aid in taking them to the next level of English training.

goFLUENT offers distance English training combining eLearning, telephone lessons and written practice solutions. Each year, goFLUENT assists more than 100,000 employees in over 2,000 companies across the word to enable them to perform better in their international relations. goFLUENT is present in ten countries and has 560 employees – of which 400 are trainers. NTT Communications (NTT Group) holds 30% of shares in the company.

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